Valuable Vice: Kierkegaard on Collective Envy in A Literary Review

Abstract

In this paper, I explore Kierkegaard’s views on envy as developed in A Literary Review, by confronting them with the capital vices tradition. I begin by developing a basic account of envy that serves as a point of reference throughout the paper. I then turn to the capital vices tradition, elaborating the concept of a capital vice, and discussing the views of Basil of Caesarea, Evagrius of Pontus, John Cassian, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas on envy’s viciousness. Subsequently, I discuss Kierkegaard’s treatment of envy in A Literary Review, exploring two of its key notions—‘the public’ and ‘leveling’—through a reading of L.P. Hartley’s novel Facial Justice (1960). In the final part of the paper, I show that the originality of Kierkegaard’s account of envy consists both in its character as a collective vice and its evaluative status as vicious yet valuable.

1. Introduction

While virtue ethics, and research into particular virtues, has been at the forefront of much recent work in moral philosophy, the vices have remained relatively underexplored. In particular, the tradition of thought on the seven capital vices has not enjoyed as much attention as one might expect.1 This is unfortunate not only because it makes the often quite abstract ideas about sin and evil in human life much more tangible, but also because, in so doing, it provides us with crucial, albeit negative, insight into what constitutes a good life.

While recent years have seen an increasing interest in Kierkegaard as a virtue-ethical thinker (See for example: Compaijen (2014), Lippitt (2020), Roberts (2022), Tietjen (2013), and Vos (2020)), his views on the vices have been similarly underexplored. In particular, not much attention has been given to how his thought relates to the aforementioned tradition. However, in a recent paper, Jared Brandt, Brandon Dahm, and Derek McAllister explore Kierkegaard’s views on sloth (acedia), and show his “novel contribution to the capital vices tradition in the form of extending and developing our understanding of acedia” (Brandt et al. 2020, p. 2). In this paper, I aim to do precisely that, focusing on Kierkegaard’s views on envy.

To be clear, I do not think that Kierkegaard explicitly places himself in the capital vices tradition, nor do I think he would have been very interested in doing so. This is not to say, however, that he was unaware of it. In a journal entry from 1839, he explicitly refers to the tradition of the “septem vitia principalia”, mentioning Gregory the Great’s (c. 540–640) views on acedia (Kierkegaard 2008, vol. 2, 39–40; SKS 18, 11).2 Moreover, we have reason to suppose that he was familiar with traditional views on envy as a vice. In Works of Love (Kierkegaard 1995), for example, he writes about the “evil eye” right before discussing envy (WL, 257; SKS 9, 256). Significantly, there is a long tradition of associating envy with the evil eye. That connection is already clear in the Latin word for envy, ‘invidia’, as ‘invidere’ from which it is derived means ‘to look against’, that is ‘to look maliciously at’ (See Kaster 2005, p. 85).

Kierkegaard discusses envy throughout his authorship. It would be an exaggeration to argue that it is a central concept in his thought, but, as Janne Kylliäinen (2014) shows, the frequent and sometimes quite extensive discussions of the concept do show his continuing interest in it. Unlike Kylliäinen’s chapter, this paper will not provide an overview of Kierkegaard’s views on envy throughout his authorship. Instead, I will focus on his discussion of envy in A Literary Review. Not only does it contain his most extensive treatment of envy, but it also focuses on two features of envy that make it very interesting in light of the traditional conception: its emphasis on envy’s collective character and its evaluation of envy as vicious yet valuable. These ideas are not only original in view of the capital vices tradition, but also in view of Kierkegaard’s authorship at large. In other texts, most notably in the second part of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Kierkegaard 2009b) and in the second part of Christian Discourses (Kierkegaard 2009a), Kierkegaard seems to regard envy more standardly as an emotion or character trait of the individual, and, moreover, as something that is quite simply deplorable.3 This does not, I believe, signal ambiguity on Kierkegaard’s part; it shows that he was aware of the fact that envy can take different shapes.

Kierkegaard’s views on envy have not yet received much systematic attention. Apart from Kylliäinen’s overview chapter, it seems that only Robert L. Perkins (1984) has devoted a full paper to the topic. He, too, focuses on A Literary Review (Kierkegaard 1978) and reads Kierkegaard’s understanding of envy against the background of the capital vice tradition as well. However, Perkins restricts his discussion of that tradition to the envious literary characters in Dante’s Divine Comedy, whereas I will engage with a number of influential systematic accounts of envy within it. Moreover, Perkins overlooks the fact that Kierkegaard does not simply condemn envy, but regards it as valuable too.

My aim in this paper, then, is to shed light on Kierkegaard’s idiosyncratic views on envy in A Literary Review. I will explore these, as I mentioned, from the perspective of the capital vices tradition. This means that I will attempt to reconstruct both envy’s place in that tradition (Section 3) and Kierkegaard’s thoughts on envy in the aforementioned book (Section 4, Section 5 and Section 6). I will begin by developing a succinct account of envy that can serve as a touchstone for my analysis throughout this paper (Section 2).

2. Envy

What is envy? Those who are familiar with the philosophical, theological, and psychological literature on envy will know that answering this question is no easy task. In this section, I will attempt to bring forward a basic account of envy. Let me begin doing so by considering one of the classical examples of envy: the biblical story of Cain and Abel. If we say, as many authors have said, that Cain was in the grip of envy, then what is it, exactly, that we are saying?

One thing that is immediately clear is that envy is an emotion that is necessarily directed towards other persons. Cain is envious of Abel, Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello is envious of Cassio, Salieri in the movie Amadeus is envious of Mozart, and you and I are envious, when we are, of friends, family members, colleagues, and so forth. Thus, envy necessarily presupposes some kind of social context, that is the presence—sometimes only imagined—of other people.

As it stands, however, this is quite uninformative. What is it about the other person that sparks our envy? Cain, the story tells us, is envious of Abel because God favors Abel’s offering to his. He is pained by the realization that Abel has something that he lacks and desires. The notion of desire is important because if Cain did not desire God’s recognition we would not be able to understand why the realization that Abel is favored by God pains him. These thoughts make clear, then, that envy essentially involves three elements. There is (1) an envier (Cain), (2) an envied (Abel), and (3) a good that is desired by the envier and in possession of the envied (God’s favor). Having this basic, triangular structure of envy in place we can now deepen our understanding of it. I will do so by elaborating the way in which the envious understand each of these three elements.

First, the envier. When I feel envious, I pointed out, I am pained by the realization that the envied has something that I lack and desire. We can make this more specific by saying that the pain of envy is the pain of feeling inferior. When I am in the grip of envy, I suffer because I feel overshadowed by the other person in some important respect. Envy, then, is essentially tied to comparison.4 Cain, we are led to believe, compares himself to Abel and realizes that his brother, due to being recognized by God, outshines him.

Second, the envied. It is no accident that Cain envies Abel, his brother. Envy arises when, upon comparison, we feel inferior to those who are relevantly similar to ourselves.5 Suppose that I care a great deal about football and, for some ridiculous reason, compare my skills in playing the game to Andrés Iniesta’s. Although his skills are vastly superior to mine, I do not envy him. Instead, I find his way of playing the game inspiring. When I lose a game to a friend who I believe is only a marginally better player than I am, however, I tend to feel envious. The point is this: the more relevantly similar we are, the more painful it will be to realize that I lack what you possess. The more we are alike, the more I will be inclined to desperately ask myself the quintessential question of the envious: ‘Why not me?’ (See Epstein 2003, p. xxii) The envious, then, see the other as relevantly similar yet superior to themselves.

Third, the good. Above I wrote that in envy one feels overshadowed by another person ‘in some important respect’. In the example I used in the previous paragraph, I introduced it by saying that I ‘care a great deal’ about football. The point of these formulations is to say that the good that the envier lacks and desires is something that s/he sees as constitutive of their self-worth. I might compare myself to someone who is very similar to myself and feel inferior with regard to their fishing skills. This sense of inferiority will now not be painful; it will not cause me to be envious of them, since I do not regard fishing skills as constitutive of my self-worth. However, Cain, in envying Abel, shows that God’s recognition matters deeply to him, and by not receiving it while Abel does his feelings of self-worth are damaged. Thus, the envious see the good that they lack and the other possesses as constitutive of their self-worth.6

Bringing these three elements together, we can define envy as the painful feeling of being inferior to a similar other with regard to a good that is constitutive of one’s self-worth.7 This definition, while not incorrect, does not, I believe, say enough. We need to add one more element: the idea that envy disposes us to desire the downfall of the other. This brings us to what is probably the most controversial issue in contemporary debates on envy. Is it necessarily hostile? That is, does envy necessarily involve the wish that the other loses their advantage over us? Or, can envy also take a ‘benign’ form, as numerous authors have argued?8 In that case, one suffers when one realizes that the other person possesses the good, but one does not wish them harm. Addressing this complex issue with sufficient depth requires a full paper of its own. The following, then, is an all-too-brief exposition of an intricate problem.

Why think that envy can be benign? Well, it is typically argued, because there clearly are situations in which we seem to be in the grip of envy, in which we suffer when we come to realize that a similar other possesses a good that we lack and desire, but do not feel hostility. This is, of course, hard to deny—but are these cases of envy? This might seem to be a mere verbal dispute, but it is not; there is a substantial issue at stake here. Suppose that you are not being promoted at work, while your colleague who is relevantly similar to you is. The situation is painful to you; after all, you desired the promotion, but you do not feel hostility towards your colleague. Now, the crucial question is of how to interpret the pain you are feeling. What you suffer from in this case, I believe, is missing out on the promotion and not the fact that your colleague is being promoted. Phrasing it more generally: what we suffer from in purported cases of benign envy is our own lack of the good and not the fact that the other possesses it (See Perrine and Timpe 2014, p. 234). What we suffer from in the former cases, in other words, is actually not inferiority. Since, the pain of feeling inferior is a necessary element of envy, benign ‘envy’ is not actually envy (See D’Arms 2017).

We have to add one more step to this argument. If it is the case that the pain in envy proper revolves around the fact that the other possesses the good—if we suffer from the contrast between ourselves and the other—then we can see why envy is a hostile emotion. The envious desire to have the contrast between themselves and the envied removed, and this means, in effect, that they wish that the envied lose their advantage over them.9 Naturally, this does not mean that we will necessarily seek to undermine the rival. We might like them, or perhaps we believe it is wrong of us to take steps towards removing their advantage or even to wish them harm. There is a good chance, that is, that we are what Justin D’Arms (2017) has called “decent enviers”. Despite being ‘decent’, however, we will in all likelihood still be relieved when the envied lose their advantage—and that strongly suggests that envy entails the desire that this happens. Following the above line of thought, then, we should define envy as follows: envy is the painful feeling of being inferior to a similar other with regard to a good that is constitutive of one’s self-worth, where that pain disposes one to desire the other’s downfall.

It is worth pointing out here that the Danish terms Kierkegaard uses when he writes about envy—the noun ‘Misundelse’ and the verb ‘misunde’—contains this aspect of hostility. As Kylliäinen (2014, p. 1) points out:, “The construction of the verb is the same as the German misgönnen. It is constructed with the help of the negating prefix mis- from an older verb unde that originally mean ‘to be disposed’ toward the other in this way or that, and later ‘to grant’ a thing to a person. Thus, the verb literally means not to grant something to the other. Usually, however, both the verb and the noun also involve a desire to take away, to deprive the other of the desired thing.”

Now that we have this conception of envy in place, it is also possible to distinguish envy from jealousy. Again, for reasons of space I need to be brief. A succinct and influential way of phrasing the differences between both emotions is this: jealousy is about the good one possesses and the threat of losing it to a rival, whereas envy is about the good one does not possess (while the rival does) and the desire to take it from them (See for example: Epstein (2003, p. 4), Protasi (2021, pp. 6–15), and Roberts (2003, pp. 257–64).). In the story of Cain and Abel, the good is God’s favor. In determining whether Cain should be seen as envious or as jealous, the key question, therefore, is this: does Cain believe he possesses God’s favor and now feels afraid of losing it to Abel (in which case he is jealous), or does Cain believe he lacks God’s favor (while Abel possesses it) and does he desire to take it from him (in which case he is envious)? Although I do not think it is wildly implausible to interpret Cain to be in the grip of jealousy, I believe the story of Genesis 4 quite clearly suggests that he is envious.10

3. Envy as a Capital Vice

Traditionally, envy has been understood as one of the seven capital vices; the other six being pride, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. These are usually referred to as the seven deadly sins, but that is not quite correct. The key difference between a deadly sin and a capital vice is that the latter is not an action. A capital vice is a vice, that is a deplorable character trait. It is an acquired habit that influences our actions, our thoughts, our ways of looking at the world. As Thomas Aquinas (2003, p. 320) explains, the ‘capital’ in ‘capital vice’ is derived from the Latin ‘caput’ which means ‘head’. A capital vice is the ‘head’—one could also say the ‘leader’—of other sins. One way to understand this is that other vices, sometimes called ‘offspring vices’, flow from it (DeYoung 2020, p. 31). Boastfulness, for example, is considered an offspring vice of vainglory, and ‘insensibility to mercy’ an offspring vice of greed (DeYoung 2020, pp. 55, 123). These, in turn, are the sources of concrete (deadly or venial) sins. Another way to understand the concept of a capital vice, as Aquinas explains with reference to an image deployed by Gregory, is to say that they are like generals commanding an army. In the way that a general uses soldiers to obtain his objective, so too the capital vice of greed, for example, uses fraud to obtain its goal of acquiring money (Aquinas 2003, p. 321).

In the previous section, I referred to envy as an emotion, but in the tradition I am discussing here it is regarded as a character trait. Is that a problem? I do not think it is, because, following Peter Goldie (2009, p. 150), I think we should say that emotions can develop into character traits: “The person who feels anger towards someone in particular can be left in a mood of ressentiment through frustration of his desires, and this feeling […] can itself consolidate into a trait: he becomes a resentful person, habitually disposed to have resentful thoughts and feelings towards all sorts of specific persons and things.” Importantly, when envy develops into a vice, this does not change its character; the person who has acquired the vice of envy is still concerned with the pain of inferiority, vis-à-vis a similar other, with regard to a good that she regards as constitutive of her self-worth, and remains disposed to desire the other’s downfall.

3.1. A Very Short History of Envy as a Capital Vice

Although nowadays envy is regarded as obviously belonging to the list of seven capital vices this has not always been the case. It took some time to ‘earn’ its place. This already becomes clear when we turn to the author who is usually considered to be the starting point of the tradition of thought on the capital vices, the desert father Evagrius of Pontus (346–399). In Evagrius’ treatises, envy is usually not regarded as one of the eight evil ‘thoughts’ (logismoi) that hinder our contemplation of God and our dealings with others. (Interestingly, then, the seven capital vices were originally not conceived as capital vices but as evil thoughts, and were taken to be not seven but eight.) While Evagrius does write about envy, he typically seems to regard it as subsumable under vainglory and/or pride rather than being an independent category of evil itself.11 John Cassian (c. 360–435), student of Evagrius and the thinker who introduced Evagrius’ thought in Western Europe, agrees. In The Institutes, he briefly discusses envy but does not grant it the status of what he describes as a ‘principal vice’ (Cassian 2000, p. 130).

All this changes with Gregory. In his extensive commentary on the book of Job he develops an account of the capital vices, adjusting the scheme laid out by Evagrius and Cassian. He comes up with the following list: pride is the root vice, growing into vainglory, envy, anger, melancholy, greed, lust, and gluttony. Gregory, then, does regard envy as a capital vice. As he does not reflect on his reasons for making the choice, it is not quite clear why he adds envy to the list. One answer might be this: whereas Evagrius and Cassian mostly wrote pastoral treatises that sought to council fellow monks who had retreated to the desert, Gregory’s commentary is a theoretical treatise meant for the church as a whole, and directed to people living their lives in society. In such a deeply social context, envy is a much more pervasive problem.12

Six hundred years later, Aquinas adopts Gregory’s thought and adjusts it in a few minor ways. In the Summa Theologiae, he replaces vainglory for pride, regarding the latter, as did Gregory, as the root of the other vices, but now including it among the other six. He replaces melancholy for sloth, and changes the order of gluttony and lust. Aquinas’ list, pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust, became canonical and has been referred to throughout the centuries by philosophers, theologians, and artists (Aquinas n.d.).

3.2. Envy’s Viciousness

While there has been dispute over whether it is a capital vice (Gregory and Aquinas) or issuing from a capital vice (Evagrius and Cassian), the tradition is consistent in its condemnation of envy. What is it about envy that makes it so deplorable? The answer the tradition has given to this question is generally twofold and corresponds to a feature of envy that is often highlighted: it being simultaneously directed towards the envier and the envied. Envy is evil, it has often been argued, because it both essentially involves hostility towards the envied and destroys the life of the envier. Let me start by elaborating the latter idea.

The most forceful, although by no means only, exposition of the idea that envy destroys the life of the envier can be found in the homily ‘Concerning Envy’ of Basil of Caesarea (330–379), teacher of Evagrius. Basil (1999, p. 463) writes: “No vice more pernicious than envy is implanted in the souls of men. This passion is first and foremost a personal detriment to the one guilty of it and does not harm others in the least. As rust wears away iron, so envy corrodes the soul it inhabits. More than this, it consumes the soul that gives it birth, like the vipers which are said to be born by eating their way through the womb that conceived them”. Anyone who has experienced envy in their lives—and who has not?—knows how painful it is. Confronted with the fortunes, happiness, success of the other, we feel inferior, invisible, overshadowed. The pain of envy makes the writer Joseph Epstein (2003, p. 1) remark: “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” The idea that the perniciousness of envy is related to its self-destructive nature is also expressed in many artistic works, depicting envy as an old woman devouring her own heart.

The viciousness of envy also expresses itself in hostility towards the other. Evagrius, for example, writes that envy inspires, among others, slander, treachery, and hatred (Sinkewicz 2003, p. 65). In Gregory’s view, envy deserves a place among the other capital vices because it is the source of many other kinds of evil: “From envy there spring hatred, whispering, detraction, exultation at the misfortunes of a neighbour, and affliction at his prosperity.”13 What makes envy deplorable is essentially related to the poisonous fruit it bears: the concrete feelings, dispositions, thoughts, and actions that it brings forth.

The feelings, dispositions, thoughts, and actions that have their source in envy are morally problematic in themselves, but there is another, more fundamental, way in which they manifest envy’s vicious nature. Above I referred to Gregory’s image of capital vices as commanders of an army of soldiers. What is envy’s ultimate objective which it seeks to realize through slander, treachery, Schadenfreude, and so forth? According to Aquinas (2003, p. 360), it aims at “diminishing the glory of another”. This aligns well with the idea, argued for in Section 2 above, that envy disposes us to desire the downfall of the other. The envious have a fundamental desire to see the painful difference between themselves and the envied removed through the downfall of the envied.

The tradition has brought forward two additional aspects of envy’s viciousness. First, what makes envy’s poisonous fruit and its desire to see the envied pulled down so deplorable is that it is loveless. Aquinas’ treatment of envy in Summa Theologiae is significantly situated in the part on caritas. In a radical way, envy is the opposite of charity; while we are called to rejoice in the other’s good, the envious suffer from it. Second, and relating to envy’s lovelessness, it is frequently suggested that envy is not just deplorable but diabolical. Death came into the world through the devil’s envy suggests Wisdom 2:24, and many authors have emphasized it since. Basil, for example, writes that “envy relates to the Devil” (Basil 1999, p. 463) and argues that Cain in enviously murdering his brother is the “first disciple of the Devil” (Basil 1999, p. 465).

4. Envy in A Literary Review

How does Kierkegaard’s thought on envy relate to the traditional conception of this vice that was explored in the previous section? In the remainder of this paper, I will elaborate a Kierkegaardian understanding of envy by focusing on A Literary Review. When looking at Kierkegaard’s discussion of envy in this book, the first substantial idea we encounter is his distinction between the envy of the individual towards herself and envy of the ‘associates’, the surrounding people, towards the individual (TA, 81; SKS 8, 78). What can we make of this? First of all, what does it mean to say that an individual envies herself? It is tempting to interpret this as Kierkegaard’s take on the tradition’s emphasis on the self-destructive character of envy. I do not think that is right, however, since, for Basil and others, we might hate ourselves in envy, but envy itself is always directed towards others. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, seems to say that there is a form of envy in which the envied is the envier. Now, in light of the basic account of envy that I developed in Section 2, the idea of someone envying herself is bound to come across as peculiar. One might respond that one can envy the person one used to be—witty, beautiful, one’s life full of opportunities—but any attempt to argue that this is genuinely a case of envy should establish why it is not a case of simply desiring to be who one used to be. It might be painful to realize how much of ourselves we have had to leave behind, but it seems odd to argue that this is the pain of inferiority.

The key to understand what Kierkegaard is getting at with the idea of the individual envying herself, I think, is to look at the notion he uses to refer to envy, ‘misunde’ which as we have seen means not to grant something to someone. Envying oneself, according to this line of thought, can be understood as a matter of not granting something important to oneself. This interpretation is confirmed when we look at the passages that explicitly deal with this self-directed envy. Kierkegaard (TA, 81; SKS 8, 78) writes that it “frustrates an impassioned decision”, and that it builds a “prison” that the individual has to break out of if she is to make a genuine decision. These passages also shed light on the close relation of envy and reflection. One of the ideas clearly animating A Literary Review is that reflection can become so dominant—in an individual as well as in society at large—that the possibility of decisive action is stifled. The passion and energy that fuels decisive action is suffocated by a host of thoughts and considerations pertaining to potential action. In this way, one robs oneself—does not seem to grant oneself—the possibility of acting decisively and of doing something extraordinary. As an illustration, Kierkegaard (TA, 85; SKS 8, 81) writes that “eventually not even a very gifted person is able to liberate himself from reflection, for he soon realizes he is merely a fraction in something utterly trivial”.

Although, then, we can make sense of the idea of an individual envying herself, it does involve a rather odd conception of envy. In contrast, the other kind of envy that Kierkegaard distinguishes, the envy of other people towards the individual, is, in one sense, more clearly in line with how envy is typically conceived. It is understood as something between different persons and, as we will see, it is a response to perceived superiority and involves the desire to see the envied pulled down. In another sense, however, Kierkegaard does something original here, too. Instead of regarding envy as something that takes place between individuals, he understands it as something that has a collective character.

Now, with regard to this collective envy, Kierkegaard makes another distinction: there is the envy that is characteristic of a passionate age (‘the age of revolution’) and the envy that is characteristic of a reflective, passionless age (‘the present’). Kierkegaard elaborates on the former by referring to the classical Greek institution of ostracism. Ostracism was a form of social exclusion in which those who were considered to be too excellent or too powerful were banished from the community. Envy, Kierkegaard (TA, 82; SKS 8, 79) argues, is the driving force behind this practice: those who are deemed too excellent must leave, in order to maintain a certain balance in society. He immediately adds, however, that ostracism “was a mark of excellence” (TA, 82; SKS 8, 79). Those voted to leave the community were, after all, banished in virtue of their excellence. As an illustration, Kierkegaard (TA, 83; SKS 8, 80) refers to an anecdote he finds in Plutarch: “The man who told Aristides that he was voting to banish him, ‘because he was tired of hearing him everywhere called the only just man,’ actually did not deny Aristides’ excellence but confessed something about himself, that his relation to his excellence was not the happy infatuation of admiration but the unhappy infatuation of envy, but he did not minimize that excellence.”

The passionate envy that Kierkegaard describes here fits well with the basic account of envy that I developed above. A group of people (the enviers) deems another person, or group of persons, (the envied) as superior because of their power or excellence in an important domain (the good), and this disposes the enviers to have the envied removed. What the envious are disposed to, one could say, is to get rid of the painful contrast between themselves and the envied. It is this idea—the idea that envy disposes us to remove painful differences—that inspired Dorothy L. Sayers (1943) to characterize envy famously as the great leveler. Now, in ostracism, as discussed by Kierkegaard, there is something that, one might say, approaches leveling. After all, those who are deemed superior are being banished, and this restores a certain balance or equality in the community. Kierkegaard, however, does not want to describe ostracism as a form of leveling, because for him leveling essentially involves something else.

Leveling is how the passionless envy that is characteristic of the present expresses itself. In our times, collective envy no longer inspires us to ban the excellent from our society; what we do, instead, is to deny that the excellent are excellent, which is what leveling fundamentally is. This envy, he writes, “does not understand that excellence is excellence, does not understand that it is itself a negative acknowledgment of excellent but wants to degrade it, minimize it, until it actually is no longer excellence” (TA, 83–84; SKS 8, 80). Further elaborating this form of envy, Kierkegaard’s characterizations become increasingly enigmatic. The leveling involved in present-day envy, he points out, “is not the action of one individual but a reflection-game in the hand of an abstract power” (TA, 86; SKS 8, 82). He describes this ‘abstract power’ as ‘the public’, which he characterizes as “the spirit of leveling” and as “an all-encompassing something that is nothing” (TA, 90; SKS 8, 86). In an attempt to shed light on these ideas, I will turn to Leslie Poles Hartley’s dystopian novel Facial Justice (1960).

5. Facial Justice

Facial Justice is set in a future society, the New State, which is developed after the (nuclear) Third World War. The New State is structured around the contrast between ‘Good E’, equality, and ‘Bad E’, envy. Everything in this society is aimed at improving equality and diminishing envy. Personal possessions are allowed but should be kept to a minimum; citizens are discouraged to express their own thoughts (it is made clear that it would be even better not to have any personal thoughts at all); and people should ideally not differ in their outward appearances. Now, uniformity in clothing is of course relatively easy to realize, but physical beauty creates a problem. The New State, however, has a solution: plastic surgery, performed at the Equalization (Faces) Center. In practice, this institution treats only women because it is assumed that only female beauty is the object of envy. Women who are beautiful beyond average (so-called ‘alphas’) are strongly encouraged to undergo surgery that will transform their faces into average, ‘beta’, faces. Those who are less beautiful than average (so-called ‘gammas’) are praised if they decide to become ‘betas’; after all, the more equality, the better, but since they do not generate envy, they are not actually encouraged to undergo surgery.

Among men, the distinctions between alpha, beta, and gamma are significant too, but usually take on a different character. While beauty is not irrelevant, brawn and brains seem more important features (Hartley 2014, p. 26). Those with remarkable qualities in these three domains are typically so-called ‘Inspectors’, a class of people, mostly men but it includes some women too, endowed with the task of surveilling society and, if necessary, punishing those who are disobedient.14

Jael 97, the protagonist of the story, is a young woman who barely qualifies as an ‘alpha’. In an effort not to arouse too much envy from her fellow citizens, she damaged her face and the scar makes her a so-called ‘failed alpha’. Nevertheless, 25 envious complaints about her beauty have been received, and, hence, she is called to report to the Equalization (Faces) Center. At the gate, she meets her friend Judith 91, a gamma who has decided to become a beta. Judith urges Jael not to undergo surgery. Impressed by her friend’s plea, she decides to disobey and keep her own face. From then on, we see how Jael tries to escape the leveling forces around her, but also how compellingly those forces are embodied in ‘the public’.

The Motor Expeditions (Country) Service offers short bus tours for those with a desire to experience the landscape outside of the state. One such tour passes one of the towers of Ely Cathedral, just outside Cambridge, which miraculously survived the war. Just when Jael, against her brother’s advice, has decided to go and see the tower, Darling Dictator, the mysterious invisible head of state who appears to see everything, issues a message that, although not forbidding them, the bus tours are being discouraged as they may arouse envy in those who cannot join.

When Jael arrives at the square where the coaches are set to depart, an enormous crowd of mostly betas has gathered who in the grip of envy are blocking the way. They argue that it is unfair that only those with tickets are allowed—equality demands that everyone should be able to go. Jael manages to reach the coach to Ely which, eventually, sets off. As the tourists see the tower for the first time they begin to panic. The sight is too impressive for people whose lives have been defined entirely by the Horizontal View of Life, which advises against looking up. They urge the driver to return, but Jael convinces him to keep going. Upon arrival, she manages to break the paralysis of the others, motivating them to get out and contemplate the tower.

What Jael does, she realizes after her trip to the tower, is “resisting a surrounding will” (Hartley 2014, p. 77). As the novel progresses, we see her increasingly opposing the leveling forces of the New State. Her opposition takes on an ingenious form. She stretches the ideology of the state to the point of absurdity in a number of articles she writes, anonymously, for The Daily Leveller. Expecting people to put it into practice, she hopes the ideology will disrupt society and undermine itself. The first article she writes provides a case in point. It covers a piano concert she attended. The first pianist, Brutus 91, is extraordinary. He is flawless, and the music he plays has just the right tempo and accents to mesmerize the audience. The applause for his performance has barely silenced when the second pianist, Cassius 92, appears on stage. It is immediately clear that he is far from the musician that Brutus is. His performance contains many mistakes and he does not do justice to the mood of the pieces at all. After the first two pieces Cassius plays, the audience, which, of course, does not want to privilege anyone, applauds as loudly as they did for Brutus. Gradually, however, they become dissatisfied. There are hisses and boos when he leaves the stages.

In her article, Jael writes that she did not join the audience in mocking Cassius, but instead applauded him. Her (insincere) reasoning is that it was not Brutus’ but Cassius’ performance that was truly outstanding. The latter’s concert was excellent, she points out, precisely in virtue of its mistakes and overall sloppiness, as it is thereby in line with our shared humanity. After all, we all make mistakes. The standard set by Brutus excludes just about everyone, while Cassius’ mediocre performance expresses a truly shared, and, therefore, acceptable standard.15

6. Collective Envy as a Valuable Vice

Reading Kierkegaard’s analysis of envy in A Literary Review through the lens of Facial Justice helps us to understand it. In this section, I will elaborate on Kierkegaard’s idea of leveling as the denial of excellence (Section 6.1), the idea of envy as a collective vice (Section 6.2), and the idea of envy as both vicious and valuable (Section 6.3).

6.1. Denying Excellence

As we have seen, Kierkegaard argues that leveling in modern culture involves the denial of excellence. Jael’s ironic reasoning in her article for The Daily Leveller provides us with a clear illustration of what Kierkegaard is getting at. In a passionate age, Brutus, in light of his virtuous performances, would have been ostracized. That ostracism, however, would have expressed an acknowledgment of his excellence. In the passionless present, on the other hand, leveling takes on a different shape; like Jael, we would simply deny Brutus’ virtuosity. There is something paradoxical to this. After all, the fact that we would envy Brutus implies that we perceive him as excellent—an excellence that we are subsequently denying.

What happens here, it seems, is that one is confronted with another person’s excellence in some domain and this might impress one or perhaps, for the shortest of moments, arouse admiration. However, the pain of realizing that one will not be able to reach the same level of excellence, immediately makes one distort one’s perception of the value of the other person’s achievement. The other is not actually excellent, one tells oneself; instead, the mediocre are truly valuable. Inadvertently, we are led to think of Anti-Climacus’ remark in The Sickness Unto Death (Kierkegaard 1980) here: “An admirer who feels that he cannot become happy by abandoning himself to it chooses to be envious of that which he admires. So he speaks another language where that which he actually admires is a trifle, a rather stupid, insipid, peculiar, and exaggerated thing” (SUD, 86; SKS 11, 199). If this process takes on a genuinely collective character, as Kierkegaard suggests in A Literary Review, then we can see why leveling constitutes a real victory over any kind of excellence and, hence, hierarchy in modern society.

6.2. Envy as a Collective Vice

The collective envy of modern society, Kierkegaard argues, is embodied by the public. How should we understand his conception of the public? Facial Justice sheds light on this issue too. The New State’s ever-growing group of betas provides us with a first, clear illustration of what Kierkegaard takes the public to be: a societal majority without genuinely distinct individuals—people look more or less the same and think and desire more or less the same—that determines how life should be lived and from whose gravitational force it is very difficult to escape. Those, like Jael, who try, meet powerful resistance; a resistance manifested not only in the envious attempts to prevent the coaches from departing, but in the almost instinctual aversion of the tourists to direct their gazes upwards as well.

I wrote that Jael realizes that she is resisting ‘a surrounding will’. This is an illuminating phrase. It suggests the image of envy as a force, akin to (although more radical than) societal trends, that, one could say, a community already participates in. It is, on second thoughts, not just the betas in the New State who constitute the envious, leveling public; almost everyone participates in the leveling logic of improving equality and diminishing envy. This becomes clear, for example, in how the gammas develop throughout the story, demanding, as could only be expected, that the betas lower themselves to their level (Hartley 2014, pp. 138–39). It also shows itself in Jael’s struggle with her brother Joab, who, despite being a failed alpha, strongly objects to her revolutionary aims. Trying to reason her out of them, and explaining how imprudent it would be to pursue them, Joab can be seen as embodying the “reflection-game” that Kierkegaard (TA, 86; SKS 8, 82) writes about. Such examples illustrate the way in which envy can be a societal force that draws people in.

What Kierkegaard does when he attributes envy to the public is, I think, very original: he seems to conceive of envy as a collective vice. This makes his account significantly different from the traditional conception of envy that was elaborated in Section 3. The tradition is not blind to the social aspects of envy. It emphasizes, as we have seen, that envy is tied to social situations, because envy necessarily arises in interpersonal comparison. Aquinas, moreover, argues that envy is fundamentally about public esteem.16 Nevertheless, the tradition consistently understands envy as a vice of the individual. Kierkegaard’s analysis in A Literary Review introduces a different way of conceiving of envy: it regards envy, embodied by the levelling public, as something that we can be said to ‘exist in’, as a social condition, a force that we participate in even before consciously choosing to. It is a form of envy that we experience not as individuals whose self-worth is tied up with particular goods, but as members of a group that cannot tolerate others to stand out and strive for the extraordinary.

Extending this point, what Kierkegaard’s analysis brings to the fore is that envy is not only anti-social, but that it is a powerful social cohesive too. I take it that this is what he means when he describes envy as a “negatively unifying principle” (TA, 81; SKS 8, 78). The tradition stresses envy’s disruptive force, pointing to its hostility and maliciousness, as we have seen, and it has, of course, good reason for doing so. Kierkegaard, however, shows—which we will probably recognize from our own lives—that there is another side to envy as well. It can forge alliances through bringing people together in a collective aversion to individuals who are different, and trying to get them to conform.

One might object that the idea of envy as a collective vice makes no sense because envy, as we have seen in Section 1, is fundamentally about self-worth, which is a strictly personal notion. I do not think that is right. We typically understand ourselves in terms of collective identities as well, for example as athletes, hunters, mothers, as Scottish, as farmers, artists, philosophers, supporters of a particular sports team—and we derive our self-worth in part from them. If I understand myself as a supporter of a particular sports team, for instance, and derive my feelings of self-worth in part from this, I might feel envious when the rival team is more successful. Although I am the one experiencing it, this envy is not strictly personal. I, myself, did not lose to the rival. I, myself, did not miss the championship, but the team with which I feel so closely connected did, and this evokes the envy of all those who identify with it in this way. Cases like this show that envy can take on a genuinely collective character.

Although envy can be a collective force, and although Kierkegaard describes it in this way, can he be said to understand it as a collective vice? That is, is envy a character trait of the public? I do not have the space here to engage with the growing body of recent literature on the topic of collective character traits (See for example: Fricker 2010 and Gilbert 2013). The key question we should ask, I think, is this: does the public, as conceived by Kierkegaard, embody a stable disposition to level differences? Does it consistently respond to excellence in an aversive manner, aiming to remove it? This is, I believe, clearly the case. Being confronted with something extraordinary, the public, as we have seen, “wants to degrade it, minimize it, until it actually is no longer excellence” (TA, 83–84; SKS 8, 80). Moreover, although Kierkegaard does not of course provide us with a theoretical account of collective character traits, his remarks on envy in A Literary Review can be seen to prefigure it. In attributing envy to the public, which he describes as “a corps, outnumbering all the people together” (TA, 91; SKS 8, 87), and understanding leveling as “not the action of one individual” (TA, 86; SKS 8, 82) but as the action of “an all-encompassing something that is nothing” (TA, 90; SKS 8, 86), Kierkegaard can be seen to implicitly hold a so-called ‘non-summativist’ view of collective character traits.17 What this means is that the public can be said to be envious even when all or some of its members, qua individual persons, are not disposed to engage in envious leveling.

6.3. Valuable Envy

The tradition, as we have seen, regards envy as morally reprehensible. It is a vice in virtue of both its self-destructiveness and its other-directed hostility, which authors like Basil and Evagrius emphasize is radically opposed to the love we are required to cultivate and, hence, diabolical. Now that we have seen that Kierkegaard in A Literary Review conceives of envy as a vice too, it is to be expected that he also condemns it. And although he does, it is fascinating to note that he regards envious leveling, at the same time, as “the point of departure for the highest life” (TA, 88; SKS 8, 84). Envy, that is, seems to be a valuable vice.18 How should we understand this?

Now that leveling has made an appearance in modern culture it can no longer be halted. This thought is repeated several times in A Literary Review, and, adding to its uncanny nature, Kierkegaard (TA, 86; SKS 8, 82) writes that leveling is like a demon that once summoned no one can control. Why is it impossible to stop leveling? Kierkegaard does not, I think, explain why in a factual sense it cannot be stopped. He claims, but does not substantiate, that “the age of heroes is past” (TA, 87; SKS 8, 83). Moreover, he does not argue that the attempt to halt leveling actually reinforces it. What Kierkegaard does offer, I want to suggest, is an explanation why in a normative sense leveling can no longer be stopped. Trying to stop leveling, he argues, is deeply problematic because it would prevent others from reaching the highest human life.

Trying to stop leveling, Kierkegaard (TA, 108; SKS 8, 102) points out, would mean to “assume decisive leadership of the crowd”. It would mean to distinguish oneself from others and become the kind of exceptional individual that leveling is making obsolete. Becoming an authority in this way means that other people will regard one as a kind of beacon, and as someone they can turn to for orientation (TA, 108; SKS 8, 102). Is that really the case, however? Jael attempts to destabilize the leveling forces in the New State anonymously. She does not assume leadership, and does not become an authority. All she does is write texts that radicalize the doctrine behind envious leveling to such an extent that, she hopes, it will run out of control. This strategy of anonymously ‘seducing people into the truth’ is, in a sense, so deeply Kierkegaardian that it puzzles me why he believes that assuming authority is the only shape an attempt to stop leveling could take.

Be this as it may, Kierkegaard argues that even if it would be possible to assume leadership in the battle against envious leveling it is something one should not strive for. On the contrary, it is disastrous because becoming an authority will obstruct “the highest development” of other people (TA, 107; SKS 8, 101). It is here that we see Kierkegaard’s complex evaluation of leveling. On the one hand, leveling is “evil” (TA, 87; SKS 8, 84). It is “not of God” (TA, 109; SKS 8, 103); it is a demon, as we have seen. On the other hand, “God permits it” (TA, 109; SKS 8, 103) because it is the “severe taskmaster who takes on the task of educating” (TA, 88; SKS 8, 84) and “the point of departure for the highest life” (TA, 88; SKS 8, 84). While the destruction of the extraordinary, and the loss of authority is deplorable it is, at the same time, a blessing. With no authority to turn to, the individual is forced to relate to herself—and herein lies the beginning of the highest life (TA, 88; SKS 8, 85).19

These remarks help us to see that for Kierkegaard, the value of envious leveling is in the first instance negative: its value consists of its removal of an obstacle that tends to prevent people from engaging with the highest life. The obstacle is our tendency to turn to others for orientation because in doing so Kierkegaard believes we avoid taking responsibility for our own lives. Leveling makes it impossible to deliver ourselves over to extraordinary others.

This is what Kierkegaard, in A Literary Review, explicitly writes about the relation between leveling and ‘the highest life’. Looking at how he characterizes the latter, however, sheds more light on the supposed value of leveling. The highest life, Kierkegaard (TA, 88; SKS 8, 85) writes, is a matter of becoming “an essentially human being in the full sense of equality.” It is a religious ideal of “equality before God and equality with all men” (TA, 88–89; SKS 8, 85). What is striking here is that, since the highest life should be understood in terms of equality, there seems to be a much stronger, almost intrinsic relation between leveling and the highest life. Leveling, by demanding equality, seems to prefigure the highest life. We should be careful, however, as Kierkegaard explains that leveling tends to lead to a deplorable form of equality—one that is paradigmatically embodied by ‘the public’—in which human individuality has no place. The task the individual faces in the modern condition, then, is “to be educated by this very abstraction and this abstract discipline […], [to] be educated to make up his own mind instead of agreeing with the public, which annihilates all the relative concretions of individuality, to find rest within himself, at ease before God” (TA, 92; SKS 8, 88). Being educated by leveling in the proper sense seems to involve becoming deeply aware that we are all, in fact, equal—that the kind of rankings and hierarchies between people that we ordinarily tend to regard as significant are ultimately meaningless. That deep awareness does not motivate us to find comfort in the anonymity of the public, but instead motivates us to cultivate selfhood. Kierkegaard’s conception of the highest life revolves around the idea of human beings becoming equals and individuals before God (TA, 88–89; SKS 8, 85).

Thus, collective envy is valuable in two respects: through leveling, it both removes a crucial obstacle to engaging with the highest life, and in a specific sense it gestures towards the highest life itself. One crucial question this conclusion raises is whether, on Kierkegaard’s view, the task of realizing the highest life can only be achieved in the modern era; after all, it might now seem as if leveling is a necessary condition for reaching the highest life. I do not think that is the case. In the last passage I quoted, I omitted a passage that makes this clear. The individual, Kierkegaard (TA, 85; SKS 8, 88) writes, has to be educated by leveling “in so far as he is not already educated by inwardness.” What this suggests is that while leveling is a valuable teacher it is not indispensable. Before the envious leveling of modern society came into existence, people were able to take on the task of becoming a single individual. As Kierkegaard’s authorship so richly demonstrates, that task is essentially human. A Literary Review poignantly clarifies that leveling, while appearing to threaten it, is actually valuable for the realization of that task.

7. Conclusions

Kierkegaard does not explicitly place himself in the capital vices tradition, but I hope I have shown that it is fruitful to confront his views on envy, as elaborated in A Literary Review, with it. It goes too far to argue that Kierkegaard understands envy as a capital vice, since we do not see him conceiving it in terms of leading to offspring vices. Nevertheless, he does seem to regard it as a vice, as it involves a stable disposition to level excellence. While the tradition consistently attributes the vice of envy to the individual, Kierkegaard is original in understanding it as a collective vice, attributing envy to what he calls ‘the public’.

The capital vices tradition condemns envy in strong words and, hence, suggests ways in which it might be cured. Kierkegaard’s treatment of envy in A Literary Review is remarkable because, while he too regards envy as vicious, he does not suggest any cures. This is because it is valuable for realizing what he describes as ‘the highest life’. Kierkegaard can, thus, be seen as making an original contribution to the ongoing conversation on the place of envy in human existence.